Samværd to investigate the outcomes of "Play in Care Homes"

Does it increase well-being and learning when children and the elderly play together in care homes across the country, and does the play have an effect on the motivation of employees in care homes and daycare centers? Now, Samværd will investigate this in a pilot project with Impactly.

Community, laughter and joy of life. That's what Foreningen Samværd experiences when they bring children and the elderly together in the project "Play in Care Homes." With "Play in Care Homes", Samværd matches care homes with day cares to build bridges and creates magical moments across generations in care homes across the country.

"We believe that the meeting between generations promotes understanding of each other and our differences, which in the long run contributes to a society where we take responsibility for each other and promote citizenship," says project leader Rasmus Holst Nielsen.

Samværd wants to change the way we are together across generations, backgrounds and living conditions, and to increase the quality of life, prevent loneliness, promote well-being and create togetherness and communities.

"We are completely clear in our mission, and we can see that we are making a positive difference for all participants, but we would like to be able to document the social impact across our target groups, so that we can better clarify the value of the effort to stakeholders ,” Rasmus Holst Nielsen tells, and continues:

"We are looking forward to Impactly helping us with that."

Impact measurement of "Play at Care Homes"

Next year, Samværd will measure the putcomes of the effort on three target groups, in order to get a better understanding of how their activity affects the participants in different ways. The measurement is to be a pilot project, which aims to investigate and verify whether the effort has a social and economic value for people and society.

During the pilot project, Samværd will measure the outcomes of "Play at Care Homes" for three target groups:

• The children, where well-being and learning, motor and language development, and their active participation will be measured
• The residents of the care homes, where well-being and motivation for physical and social activity will be measured
• The staff, where you want to measure well-being and motivation in terms of playroom activities

"When we bring children and the elderly together, we can see that it has a positive effect, but we would like to investigate and clarify the concrete social impact for each individual target group, so that we can document our experience of the impact of the effort," says Rasmus Holst Nielsen

In addition to giving Samværd insight into the effect of the effort, the pilot project will also help to clarify whether there might be a more financial gain in the effort in the form of better job satisfaction among employees, which can help to increase retention, reduce sick days and improve the opportunities to recruit care and daycare staff.

"We believe that it is important that we are open and curious about each other, regardless of age and living conditions. We must not hide ourselves and those we care about the most behind boxes and institutional walls. We can see how much joy in life and meaningfulness that is shared at "Play at Care Homes", and how much it gives both children, the elderly and the professional staff who join the playrooms," says Rasmus.

At Impactly, we look forward to our platform helping Samværd measure and clarify the outcomes of "Play in Care Homes".

"Play at Care Homes is an exciting case, because it makes so much sense if you can create shared joy and laughter across generations and institutions. In addition, we are looking forward to seeing whether Samværd's assumptions about the outcomes of the effort are correct, and whether it can make sense to carry out a definite valuation of the effort," says Johan Dubert, CEO. CEO of Impactly, and continues:

“It is a pragmatic and realistic way to start. We often say that it is better to measure fewer things correctly than not to measure at all. And our collaboration with Samværd has mainly been about finding the right model for the pilot project, a meaningful outcome measurement, and what the results should demonstrate."

A measurable change theory is alpha and omega

Together with Samværd, Impactly has drawn up a theory of change that makes it possible to measure the outcomes and get results that can make the potential social and economic value of the effort propable.

"The target groups have different potential gains from the intervention. So we measure, for example, the children's language and motor skill development, the care home residents' motivation to participate in physical and social activities, and the employees' well-being and motivation to participate in playroom activities," says Anton Karlsson, Head of Impact at Impactly, who has collaborated with Samværd on their theory of change.

“And if we see a positive development, we will then examine whether it impacts the institutions' budgets in terms of increased retention, better recruitment, and reduced absenteeism, and whether the intervention creates social value for participants and their relatives in the form of increased life satisfaction,” concludes Anton Karlsson.

However, measuring the impact of "Play in Care Homes" also presents some challenges because two of the target groups (the children and the care home residents) cannot be expected to complete questionnaires. Therefore, staff recordings have been chosen to initially get an indication of whether there is a movement among all target groups towards increased well-being, learning, and motivation.

“We are not using validated questionnaires, which we otherwise always recommend. However, the purpose of this measurement has a slightly different approach, where Samværd wants to see if they can detect positive changes in the data, and at the same time, the target group is generally difficult to collect data from using classic questionnaires,” says Anton Karlsson.

Facts

Samværd is a non-profit association established in 2017.

In 2022, Samværd received funding from the Nordea Foundation of 4,314,226.00 DKK and 1,848,954.00 DKK from TrygFonden to expand "Play in Care Homes" across Denmark over the next three years.

Today, the initiative is rolled out in 30 care homes across 14 municipalities nationwide - and more are on the way.

The pilot project runs from August 2024 to August 2025.

Read more about Samværd.

Start your own impact journey

Do you, like Samværd, want to measure the impact of your intervention in order to report the social and economic value?

Then book a demo with Johan Dubert today.

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Photo credit: Trygfonden v. Claus Bech